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Ode To 
Prophesy 



Ode To Prophesy 

By 

Hiram Powers D ilw or th 



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Copyright, 1910 

by 
Hiram Powers Dilworth 



'Cf.A275210 



ODE TO PROPHESY 



I 



Earth finds a truth each day. 

Her past is gemmed with many. 

All leading to the splend'rous way 

Where Equity and Mercy sway. 

With not a pang for any. 

Behold each prophet lord 

Smiting with his tongue but not his sword ; 

The monarch's rough dominion, 

Erst-while deep dyed in blood, 

Beneath the prophet's pinion 

(Who flys wheree'er he would). 

Grows calm as when a hand 

From Christ's eternal land 

Stretches restraint across a stormy flood. 



II. 



The clinging mists not yet had parted. 
Heaven from earth not yet divided, 



ODE TO P RO PH ES Y 

When order from the tumult started 

And savage good made law; 

'Twas writ in thunder-bolts upon the sphere, 

Each crackling mountain groaned in fear, 

The coward tempests row subsided. 

Vibrant in hushful awe; 

The molten valleys quieted apace. 

The infant world had entered on its race. 

It rolled — it sung — it trembled — panted — 

By that same good its path was granted; 

It leaped into its harness, vaulting wide, 

A barren, rock-torn, crater-haunted ball; 

The mist came down and formed into a tide. 

And land and ocean slowly rounded all: 

A silent world where sense nor sight doth fall. 

III. 

Across the miles of desolation striving, 

A timorous green 'gan creep, — 

The earth's initial luxury, scarce thriving 

Above that fatal deep; 

The forests grew upon the tropic poles. 

The plastic protozoa freely spawned. 



ODE TO PROP H ES Y 



To north, to south, to west, to east 

The verdure rose hke bubbling yeast. 

And fell in flakes and massy rolls. 

And monsters grew and threshed upon the ground. 

Yet good was there. 

Like voices through a starless night. 

Betwixt the thunder peals. 

The jungle law of fear and might 

Before a gentler reels: 

Unto its kind grouped kind. 

Linked mutually in mind 

Of frightfuller dissentions. 

And hostiller intentions 

Borne through the jungle air; 

The mother's mercy toward her hungering brood. 

Denying self that they might eat of food; 

The family oneness resting o'er the race. 

Giving the savage law a subtler place. 

IV. 

But O! when from that fearsome garden, wild 
And thick growing with many a startling shoot, 
Man grew his bud and opened with the dawn, — 



ODE TO P ROP H ES Y 

Across that growth, death-spotted and defiled. 

Knotted with rotting bulb and poisonous fruit, 

A rosette flashed and was as quickly gone. 

And from the whitening poles, from south, to north. 

Swift winds arose and whipped the furies forth, — 

They spit, they scowled, they groaned, they growled. 

They wept, they shouted, moaned and howled. 

The sun grew chill and coated with a mist. 

The falling vapors plunged and hissed; 

The world grew numb with cold and sick with blight. 

Over the brine settled a noisy night; 

The splitting ice-fields filled the day with thunder. 

And scalloped frequent bowl and woodless wonder. 

When lo! the crusted sun grew sudden bright and warm. 

The rigid earth grew flaccid, weak and still. 

Until the trembling vapors burst in storm — 

Then waked the pulseless world with mighty thrill. 

A ruddy world! A rosy world! 

And all creation sang a hymn to life; 

The startled sun-gleams danced and gaily whirled. 

The mammal crawled, the man was quick to strife: 

Pestilences, war and clamorous greed 

Bred rapid family, swept across the waste; 



ODE TO PROP H ES Y 

And hating tribesmen died to meet another's need. 

Living their fickle law with bloody haste. 

Into the caves men hid and reared their brood. 

And walked abroad only to gather food; 

Into the caves to shun the element, 

The lightning's fury and the mad torrent. 

And e'er the family multiplied to kin, 

A human grace suffused without, within. 

And savage neighbors met in kinder way 

To build their little villages of clay, 

'Til rising in the wake of that advance. 

Great Kingdoms formed and fell by lawful chance. 

V. 

Across the eastern verge, scarce saved from night. 
Where pallid stars ne'er glimmered for the cloud, 
A radiant goddess poised in quivering flight. 
And shook the spangles from her vap'rous shroud. 
She shook the lustre from her golden hair, 
She spread her tresses out upon the dawn, 
Unto the chill her bosom did she bare. 
She placed her foot upon the trembling stair 



ODE TO P ROP H ES Y 

And flashed her signal hght the world upon. 
Straight drove the beacon, and the people cried: 
"We have foretold the tale of prophesy. 
We have rescribed the page of yesterday," 
And bright she shone — the goddess — then replied: 
'*Here are my tables. Oh, ye men! Athwart 
The east I place them; they shall shine 
Increasingly, and, one by one, support 
A stately temple where the youths may court 
In splendid flight, the songful sacred nine." 
With that she smiled so greatly that the whole 
Basin of night flamed into ruddiest day; — 
Until the royal maiden's lofty soul 
In mellowest sun-beams o'er the morning lay; 
And through the hours the people lived and talked. 
And met in commerce and in commerce walked. 

VI. 

Thus spake the goddess History, 

Robed in a shroud of mystery, 

And when she ended all the world did toil; 

The plowshare plunged into the soil. 



ODE TO P RO P H ES Y 



And from its furrow rose the plenteous grain, 

Man ate the bounteous harvest of his pain; 

The world was wide for beast and human kin. 

Yet both did smite and chronicle no sin. 

Upon the steps of some such lofty steep 

As bounds the Afric ocean's northern sweep. 

Drilled in the awe the thundering universe 

Made sacred school, quick to rehearse 

The rites of fear — man bowed beneath the yoke 

Which centuries have borne and never broke. 

Full soon the neighbor bent his envious brow 

Upon the fertile field without his own; 

Full soon his greedy gaze would not allow 

The civic peace until the fields were one — 

And that one his — the right to sow alone. 

The love of ease did rankle then, no rest 

His mind conceived; he thirsted for the power 

A sordid conscience, fretful at its best. 

Asked of the other's strength and leisured hour. — 

And that were his e'er fell the season's dower. 

O! vulturous master! fickle-minded slave! 

The one a cowering fool — the first a knave! 

Fierce threat and rancorous crime despoiled each night, 



ODE TO PR OP H ES Y 

A bitter cast evolved, and man was sold 
Each to the stronger for the price of right, — 
Scarce yet the vile beginning has been told ! 
With knuckling shoulders, sweating to his task, 
The fool prepared his brother's holy masque; 
Which, donned, scarce hid the cancer and the blear. 
And blood-tips faintly traced the hands of fear; 
And tears discolored some its silken gloss. 
And blurred the diamonds in their beds of moss. 
O! it were sad to hear the broken tone. 
The snarling whip-leash and the fevered moan ; 
And it were shame to hear the ribald jest 
Distilled from mid-night wine and drunken guest. 
The costly banquet held no depth of cheer. 
Because a cowering wretch was weeping near ; 
The world was wide for man and for his kin. 
And one did smite, yet chronicle no sin! 

VII. 

It is a season dutiful, 

A time that bonds the breathing earth, 

And meets its dearth 

With blessings fond and beautiful, — 



ODE TO P RO P H ES Y 

'Tis such a time, when prophets sing, 

When the dull day grows brighter. 

And people cease from their jargoning, 

And their hearts are lighter. 

'Tis humble ground ! Within no laurel's shade 

The prophet rests his vision; 

Through blinding sun-swept avenues his course is laid, 

He treads no land Elysian. 

The soil is on his feet, the fever in his throat. 

His garments briar-worn, his heart athirst; 

And yet he sounds for all a plaintive simple note, 

Holding its import first. 

God bless the prophet! scarce is he 

To mould his end with spurious sanctity. 

VIII. 

They spat upon him and they called him vile, 

He sang of love — he sang of perjured might — 

His measure sounded through the battle's awful while; 

He sang the crime of war, he told its cause. 

In bounding rhythms he arraigned the laws. 

Showing the puppet Justice in the Farce of Right. 



ODE TO P ROP H ES Y 



He sang the greed of thrones. 

Their price of flesh and bones. 

The consequential profit-mongering lust, 

Unkind alike to King and wallowing fool; 

The ashes and the dust 

Of Faith, Hope, Love and virtuous Rule. 

Within the compass of his throbbing lyre. 

Pearl-strung, and trembling from the clash of strings. 

To modern ends the prophet did aspire. 

And sang of yellow gold and festering things ; 

Of power suckled by the glistering god. 

Of youth, of beauty where the fair god smiles. 

Of rotting growth and fever where he frowns; 

He sang of lordly rights and veiled crowns. 

Of craft and unregenerate wiles. 

And burial shrines of alabaster and of sod; 

Of the sweet law of Equity 

Which formed the primal world. 

And shaped the forces into harmony 

Ere time's flag was unfurled; 

That same law (he said) will model men 

As truly as it modeled forces then; 

That same law (he sang) will lift the height 



ODE TO PRO PH ES Y 



Of common levels to the prophet's plane of light; 

The march of industry ne'er kept such rhythmic time 

As when the earth forsook her paths of crime; 

The wheels of progress never so securely freed 

As when the law had banished all its greed. 

Within the flickering trail 

Which History's lamp hath left upon the wind. 

He read a lasting tale 

Of Error stepping constantly behind, — 

Of subtle force and necessary woe. 

Shifting from virtue as each virtue grows. 

Good but a day, then shines with feebler glow 

As fairer fields of right the times disclose. 

IX. 

The stars twinkle — a thousand points of fire — 

A film of sacred smoke 

Across their happy faces 

Now flecks and now embraces. 

Now purpling over them in pure desire. 

Now rending twain its cloak: 

A thousand spirits — a thousand throated choir! 

Across each happy voice 



ODE TO P RO P H ES Y 



A snarl of scorn, a spit of spleen 

Half breaks, now wholly moves between — 

Now righteously makes loud rejoice, 

Now struggles in an energy of ire. 

Behold! the world is come into its own! 

When man was not articulate, 

And spake with hand, 

It were a master prophet who could so relate 

That all could understand. — 

Now are we prophets for we all intone 

With mutual tongue, and each to each are known. 

The noble summit, erst the prophet's height. 

Grows commoner level as each day falls into night; 

The radiant future only gods may say 

Will be the nucleus of some better day. 

Self love may linger, walking proudly in its scorn 

Of meaner things — it is but yet the morn ! 

When aging generations shall be wise in truth. 

That prospering self is but the exercise of ruth, 

A loftier level shall the graded plan 

Schedule to meet the man. 

The garden grows a stronger kindlier shoot 

Where all may pluck the fruit. 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



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